Attention is often drawn to the development of fourth generation mobile telecommunication networks, such as those based on the 3GPP defined Long Term Evolution (LTE) architecture, due to the increased data rates that these advanced networks make available. For example, with the enhanced radio interface and transmission techniques provided by LTE, users will be able to enjoy mobile applications, such as video streaming and online gaming, that would previously only have been available via a fixed line connection.
However, along with high bandwidth applications, another a class of applications is currently being developed which, rather than taking advantage of high data rates, instead seeks to take advantage of the robust radio interface and increased coverage area made possible by fourth generation mobile telecommunications technology. Examples include so-called machine type communication (MTC) applications. MTC applications are typified by reduced complexity semi-autonomous or autonomous devices communicating small amounts of data on a relatively infrequent basis. Examples include so-called smart meters which, for example, may be located in a customer's house and periodically transmit information back to a central MTC server relating to the customer's consumption of a utility such as gas, water, electricity and so on.
Deploying an entirely independent MTC type network using fourth generation mobile telecommunications architecture would likely be uneconomic, at the very least due to the cost of a license allowing access to a suitable carrier (i.e. a designated section of the frequency spectrum reserved for the operation of the network which a regulator allocates to network operators). A more practical approach is to deploy an MTC type network within a conventional fourth generation network which is otherwise used to support more conventional communication devices (e.g. mobile phones, data cards, smart phones and so on).
However, simply deploying MTC type devices in a conventional fourth generation mobile telecommunication network is unlikely to be very efficient. For example, MTC type devices operating in a network would be expected to generate a high volume of random access requests in proportion to the total amount of data transmitted. Transmission of the associated signalling data would use a great deal of uplink and downlink radio resource and also consume valuable network processing capacity. If significant numbers of MTC devices were deployed, this could well reduce the network resources available for other users of the network and thus result in a reduction in the available quality of service. Moreover, data delivery for many MTC applications is not time critical (i.e. delays in the transmission of MTC data can be tolerated). On the other hand, many other applications do involve time critical data delivery such as voice calls or video streaming. Thus network resource could well be consumed transmitting non-time critical data from MTC devices at the expense of time critical data transmission by other users.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a technique that allows an MTC type network to be integrated with a conventional fourth generation mobile telecommunication network without having a substantially adverse effect on the quality of service available to non-MTC devices in the network.